President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget will be released May 23, but The Washington Post is already reporting on what Trump’s proposal will look like. The fiscal year 2018 budget begins in October and if Trump had his way, 10 million people would be kicked of Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Trump’s budget plan is aligned with House Republicans who passed a bill that would eliminate $800 billion from safety next programs over the next decade. If that wasn’t enough, the White House plan also calls for giving states more flexibility to impose work requirements for people who are enrolled in anti-poverty programs. This should be no surprise since Trump said that too many people were on welfare shortly after becoming president.
“We want to get our people off welfare and back to work…It’s out of control,” Trump said.
Other Trump budget proposals included increased military spending, increased border security spending, decreased funding for housing, environmental protection and foreign aid spending and reductions to research and development.
Luckily Trump’s budget plan would have to be approved by Congress. Although the Republicans control both the House and Senate, Trump’s budget proposal is likely to face much more scrutiny in the Senate, which has a razor-thin Republican majority. Eliminating healthcare for millions of Americans or reducing food assistance programs to the poor may not seem like a good idea for many more moderate Republicans.
According to the article in The Washington Post, there were 44 million Americans who relied on food assistance in 2016. This number had increased from 28 million people who received benefits in 2008 prior to the economic collapse.
Trump seems to be focusing on the very poor as a way to decrease government spending. There is a possibility that the budget would also target the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program that provides funds to the elderly, disabled children and disabled low income adults. Needless to say, this budget proposal has not been met with enthusiasm by leading Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, (D-N.Y.) said the president’s budget proposal was pulling “the rug out from so many who need help.”
“This budget continues to reveal President Trump’s true colors: His populist campaign rhetoric was just a Trojan Horse to execute long-held, hard-right policies that benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the middle class,” Schumer said.
The 2018 fiscal year budget might be just the beginning for Trump’s assault on the poor, including many of who actually supported Trump in the 2016 election. In March the administration suggested it may also make changes to funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
If this budget proposal is accurate, Trump is asking for the poor to do with even less while he is targeting tax breaks for the wealthy by reducing the estate tax, capital gain taxes and reducing the business tax rate.
Trump’s ideas of reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social programs for the poor is nothing more than trickledown economics that has been tried many times before and has never been effective for the middle class or the poor.
